About Reluctant Ford owner

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I think the new cam sensor and bleed off pipes have helped a bit, but it is still hard to start/restart and cuts out the engine on a frequent basis. So this morning I got 4 yogurt pots and some hose, stuck them on the injector bleed off ports and ran the engine to look at bleed off rates for the different injectors. I was going to be scientific and run it on idle for a couple of mins and then alternate high revs/idle a few times then measure the amount, but after less than a minute at idle, one of the pots was almost full! Numbering left to right when facing the car, No.1 was the best, just a small amount in the pot. No. 2 was bad, a half filled pot, No. 3 was about a quarter full and No. 4 was almost a full pot. So it looks like the garage's suggestion was right, it is the injectors bleeding off too much fuel so the high pressure cannot be maintained in the common rail. Anyone know where I can get some cheap injectors and if I need to get the new injectors registered with the ECU?

This morning I replaced the cam sensor, was £15 and easy to do. But it hasn't helped much. I had no stalling driving around town, but as soon as I got on the motorway and got some speed up, it began flashing the glow plug light, then cutting out the engine. Also the restarting was not quick. I also bought some injector bleed off hose and I've just replaced that on the car. Hopefully that will solve the problem, I'll find out on the way home tonight.

It's not just Ford dealers that are crap. It's the same with other brands. Even though it costs you £300, with their overheads etc dealers don't have time to service cars properly and make a profit, so a lot of minor things get overlooked, or they'll fob you off until the warranty runs out, then it's not their problem anymore and they can sell you a new car. But as I said, it's not just Ford that are like that.

Problem has got a lot worse and now the car is difficult to start. Depending on how long the car has been standing it can take up to 60 secs for the engine to fire. This is bad when you are going along the motorway and the engine cuts out and it takes 20 secs to get the thing started again. I thought it might be the excess fuel bleed off pipes from the injectors. On another car I had, the rubber would perish letting air in, making the car difficult to start and run badly. I spoke to a garage and they said the injectors tend to go bad regularly on Fords and I should recon the injectors. I looked on eBay, it's about £100 per injector. It's not worth doing the whole set as the car is probably worth not much more than that. Seems like Ford did not standardise their OBD system for diesels until after 2004, so that's why my Scangauge 2 won't read it, and probably most other things won't either. Any more thoughts? At this rate I'm going to burn out the starter.

If the new discs were fitted on hubs that were not cleaned properly, you will still get judder. It only takes dirt about the thickness of a human hair on the hub to put the disc out of alignment and cause judder. You should also check the calipers and slider pins are not seized etc.

The car had an intermittent misfire ever since I first got it, but no glow plug light flashing. Only one of the plugs in it was ok. The glow plugs I replaced them with were Bosch and have been in for a while now. I changed the fuel and air filters some time ago and I replaced it again at the weekend. With the air filter there was a little square sponge that came with the filter, but there didn't seem to be anywhere obvious as to where it should go and there was nothing in the Haynes manual about it. In the filter box on the car, there was a similar bit of sponge, but it was just left floating free inside the airbox. Any idea what the sponge is for? Could this be the problem? I've got a Scangage 2 OBD thing, which I've used on other cars to read and clear fault codes, but it doesn't seem to want to connect to the Focus ECU. I probably need to change its settings. The annoying thing is the car is fine most of the time, then suddenly it will decide to play up. Yesterday I drove 300 miles and it only did it once. Most often when it's misfiring, it will do it soon after driving off from a start and reving the unloaded engine hard seems to make it behave. Then sometimes out of the blue when accelerating it will go into some kind of limp mode and the glow plug light flashes. Once the engine is switched off then on again everything is fine.

Hi I need help! My 10 yr old 1.8 TDCi randomly misfires and sometimes cuts out completely. Often it will go into some kind of limp mode with the glow plug light flashing. It's intermittant and the rest of the time the engine runs fine. Any ideas what might be causing this? My other half refuses to drive the car until I can sort it out. Thanks, RFO

I bit the bullet and got one from Ford. At least it is the whole hose including check valve and the rest to the back of the engine, I was worried it would just be the bit of pipe from the pump to the check valve!

After putting a new brake vacuum pump on my TDCi Focus, I'm still getting oil leaking out of the pipe coming out of the top of the pump. It seems to be the leaking from where the plastic pipe goes into a metal threaded part that srews into the pump. I've asked Ford how much a new one would cost and it's £32, for a bit of pipe with a connector on the end! I was wondering if it's possible to get one elsewhere that is cheaper, or whether I'd be better off modding the pipe connector by converting it to something where the plastic tube could slide onto it and then be secured with a jubilee clip. Any thoughts?

Hey Sal, nice post. I'm thinking of doing this too, do you have any more pics? ie close ups of the job in progress? I was reading up on EGR valves and they seem completely pointless. Ok, they might lower NOx, but then you have to burn more fuel to get the performance back and then create more pollution!

lottysvdub, I'm not saying everyone in in the trade is a crook or a moron, it's just hard to find people you can trust who are any good. I have yet to have a satisfactory experience whenever I have had to take any of my cars to a main dealer and it's not Fords I'm talking about. You pay a lot of money and things never seem to get resolved. Part of the problem is you never speak to the person who works on the car, you get it third hand from a dopey receptionist who doesn't have a clue. So straight away it feels like you are being fobbed off. The other part of the problem is that cars have become ever more complex and difficult to work on. Plus you never get as much time to look at a car as you would really need, so I do feel sorry for the mechanics, it is a high pressure job. As someone said above, I think there is too much reliance on self diagnostics, which tend to overlook simple mechanical problems.You have been in the business long enough that you have experience of pre self diagnostic days, which I imagine sets you apart from most of the people working in main dealer garages these days.

Thanks for the encouragement! Yesterday there was a break in the rain/snow/general crap weather and I managed to get everything back together. It started ok (as well as it does anyway!) and drove it round the block. The brakes worked ok and all seemed fine. I then looked at the water level, expecting to have to top it up because I had to detach the thermostat housing from the head to get access to the brake pump and I lost some coolant in the process. But the water level was still close to max. I don't know if there's a chance of an airpocket? So I was feeling pleased with myself, until I looked at the front passenger footwell and noticed that Ford had generously decided to provide a little cold water foot spa for the occupant of that seat. Seriously, this car has too much character for my liking! :D I was worried it might have been coolant coming from the heater matrix, but it was clear water, not pink antifreeze coloured and it did not smell like antifreeze, so I can only assume it's rainwater. Any idea how I deal with this? Thanks, RFO

When you go into a dealer and the mechanics are called "technicians" you know you are in trouble. A lot of them are just lap top monkeys who don't know their &#33;Removed&#33; from their elbow when it comes to cars. If the computer says "No" they haven't got a clue.